Moshe held three of his children close to him. His wife, Bracha, clung to their three other children. The youngest was three years old; the oldest, 15. On Friday afternoon, June 20, the blasts from Israeli defense systems echoed in the distance. Then, a much louder explosion made it clear to the 15 people packed into the makeshift shelter – a bare, 20m² ground-floor room – that another Iranian missile had just struck Haifa, a city of nearly 300,000 residents, about 15% of whom belong to Israel's Palestinian minority population.

During the long minutes that followed the initial alert on their phones, the blaring sirens in the street, and then the sound of explosions, Moshe (who declined to give his last name) quietly recited the Psalms of David before thanking God for having spared him, his children, and his wife, who is a teacher. Both parents are in their 30s. "The Iranians have very powerful weapons; we have to act before they gain even more force," said Moshe, who is ultra-Orthodox, currently unemployed, and devotes most of his time to studying religious texts.

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